Publisher's Description

Newly widowed Charlotte Figg purchases a double-wide trailer sight unseen and moves to the Paradise Trailer Park with her dog Lucky. Unfortunately, neither the trailer nor Paradise are what Charlotte expected. Her trailer is a ramshackle old place in need of major repair, and the people of Paradise are harboring more secrets than Bayer has aspirin. Charlottes new friend Rose Tattoo learns that Charlotte played softball and convinces her to rally the women of Paradise into a team. Reluctant at first, Charlotte warms to the notion and is soon coaching the Paradise Angels. Meanwhile, Charlotte discovers that the manager of Paradise, Fergus Wrinkel, abuses his wife Suzy. Charlotte sets out to find a way to save Suzy from Fergus and in the process comes to a difficult realization about her own painful marriage.

Author Bio

Joyce Magnin is the author of several books, including The Prayers of Agnes Sparrow, named one of the "Top 5 Best Christian Fiction Books of 2009" by Library Journal. Her short fiction pieces and articles have been published in such magazines as Relief Journal, Parents Express, Sunday Digest, and Highlights for Children. A member of the Greater Philadelphia Christian Writers Fellowship, Joyce is a frequent workshop leader at various writers conferences and womens church groups. She has three children and one grandson, and is mom to a neurotic parakeet who lives with her in Havertown, Pennsylvania.

This was one of the best books I've read in a long time. It made me laugh out loud and it had life lessons to be learned also. A real page turner. This was my first book by this author---I have since purchased 5 more and am looking forward to the winter to read.

The book had a good premise but it was not written to where it would really hold your interest. I liked the characters it was just some of them were not really developed. The main character was very likable. I would recommend this book just due to the fact that there really were some good spots.

When I finished the book, my first thought was, "I wish I could have been the editor!" That is because I felt that with just a bit of tweaking this book could go from "pretty good" to "great read." The author's strong point is character development. You get to know the characters and their motivations. The pacing is excellent (until the final two chapters). The storyline is fresh and believable until.. it stops. If I had been the editor, I would have asked the author to rewrite the ending because she switched from 'showing' to 'telling,' and that left some unresolved issues. I am not talking about a set-up for a possible next book in the series either. I mean it just stops without an honest resolution.

Charlotte, the main character, knows the hidden truth about a felony in which another character dies. Apparently she is fine with that. In her prayer, she rationalizes it as "keeping a promise." The author fails to give any hint that this is a setup for a future disaster, and this omission is the greatest weakness of the book: the failure to recognize that keeping a lie is not okay. The entire theme of the book is about getting old garbage out in the open and rebuilding a life (several lives, actually), and yet the heroine decides to be complicit in secretly storing other characters' garbage. That is a bit traitorous for the reader.

The other spot where the editor failed this author was in not fixing a gratuitous scene. There is a lot of evidence that Charlotte had suffered psychological abuse from her husband, and throughout the book she is dealing with and recovering from those issues; but then near the climax, and seemingly out of the blue, she says it was physical abuse. Why? Just to identify with another character? It weakened the reader's opinion of Charlotte to have that thrown in so late in the story. Charlotte is in her early 40s (you have to run the math based on a conversion with her mom to get this because up to that point she acted older). The psychological abuse toward a woman that age was well written and believable. But the "Oh, yeah, and my late husband hit me too" coming out the way it did later in the story actually made me feel less sympathy for her. If this character shows up in any sequel, I hope she gets slapped with an obstruction of justice charge.